


A Kindness in Return

by TUNiU



Series: Let's See How Many Endgame Fix-its I Will Write [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Soul Stone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 17:21:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18664921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: Here's another endgame fix it. Steve Rogers has the soul stone and there is no one to stop him.





	A Kindness in Return

**Author's Note:**

> So is no one going to write about how Steve has to visit Vormir and see Red Skull? 
> 
> Dialogue heavy, description light. But honestly, we all know what everyone looks and sounds like by now.

Steve saves returning the soul stone for last. He’s going to retrieve Natasha’s body while he does it. Vormir is a horrific landscape to warp to, such a contrast to the mighty halls of Asgard. The climb up to the top of the mountain is long and boring. There is no flora or fauna to capture Steve’s attention. Just the ceaseless left and right of his steps, just the wind and the rock.

Clint told him who to expect as the keeper of the Soul Stone so he is not surprised when he sees the red skull of  “Johann Schmidt,” he greets his old enemy.

“Captain America. I have not heard the name Johann Schmidt in many years,” Schmidt says. He just floats in front of Steve, without malice. Without...anything. Schmidt could be a robot for all the life in his eyes.

“Where’s Natasha?” he asks.

Schmidt points to the horizon. “I buried her with the others.”

Steve looks and sees perfectly aligned rows of rock piles. The entire planet is made of rock and what Steve took for a natural weathering of the strata is a field of graves stretching as far as the eye can see.

“You cannot have her,” Schmidt adds. “The exchange is eternal.”

The case in Steve’s hand is light. It’s mostly padding for stones that don’t really need it, stones that are back where they belong. All save one. “And if I wanted to exchange it back,” Steve asks.

“It would not be a sacrifice if you could take it back,” Schmidt’s voice is monotone, possibly even bored, but the Steve catches a flash of something in his face, curiosity maybe. “I have never seen someone give back the stone. I have been here for millions of years, and the stone has always made its own way home.”

Steve steps back. “But you disappeared in 1945.”

Schmidt nods and wafts up and down. “And I was made the eternal keeper of the soul stone. I will be the keeper for as long as the soul stone exists.”

“That’s horrific,” Steve can’t help the sympathy he feels.

“Some would say this is a well deserved punishment for my deeds in life.”

“It will be over soon, the stone gets destroyed in four years,” Steve tells him.

Schmidt wafts backwards in surprise. He returns, floats close to Steve’s face. “Is this kindness for your old enemy?”

“This isn’t punishment, this is torture.”

“You are being kind, telling me my time is at an end. No one ever stops to be kind to the keeper. Let me be kind in return: you hold the stone, you hold the power of life itself. The stone can return what is lost to you.”

Steve kneels and puts the case on the ground, he opens the latches and takes out the infinity stone. It’s such a small thing, shining yellow with cosmic glow. “Has anyone ever used the stone to bring back their sacrifice?”

Schmidt nods. “Many have tried. I buried them with their loved ones.”

The stone is cold in Steve’s hand. He thought it would be hot with power. It’s cool like the wind after the rain. A little thread of awareness needles its way into his brain, a limb he never knew he had flexes. He feels the life in Schmidt, in the amoebas locked under Vormir’s crust. He senses the microbes in his skin, the bacteria in his gut. He understands the cycle of creation from hydrogen to sunlight to stardust to people who eat the plants that eat the sunlight.

Though the body he calls for is long turned to ash, the soul is intact. Bodies are just iterations of stardust. Steve takes stardust from the universe, he takes the hydrogen and the carbon and the iron, he forces the material to take the form most suited to the human soul.

The body forms in front of Steve, laid out on the ground, particle by particle until...

...Tony Stark gasps awake.

He breathes in, coughs a few times, flinches back from seeing Schmidt. When he catches sight of Steve, he looks around at Vormir, at himself, then “Not that I’m not grateful, super grateful, really, but you couldn’t make me clothes while you’re at it?” he complains.

“You’re welcome,” Steve tells him. He holds the stone to Schmidt.

Schmidt doesn’t take it, but the stone flies out of Steve’s hand and zips off into the sky.

Steve’s trip to return the stones was well planned. He has multiple supplies of both nanites and Pym particles for the trip home. He claimed it was in case of accidents, but he was always planning on doing something stupid, he just didn’t know what it would be until he did it.

“Did you really just do this? I can’t believe you just did this. I was dead, right. I feel like I was super dead. Shit, Pepper.”

“Pepper is okay, so is Morgan, and Peter.” Steve sets the nanites onto Tony, the suits form around them. Steve grabs a tight hold of him and warps them both home.


End file.
